Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji

In this seminar, Emily Mendenhall, professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, discussed her investigations into how people responded to COVID-19 in her hometown in northwest Iowa. Her investigations led to the publishing of the book Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (2022), which explores political priorities, cultural squabbles, and business interests that undermined public health efforts when no mandates were in place.

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Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist and professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her award-winning trade book Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (2022) investigates how people responded to COVID-19 in her hometown in northwest Iowa. Unmasked explores political priorities, cultural squabbles, and business interests that undermined public health efforts when no mandates were in place. Mendenhall has written about this research in Vox, Scary Mommy, Scientific American, and academic journals, including Social Science and Medicine and Global Public Health.